All work and no pay for newly appointed nurses of Hamidia hospital

“All work and no pay” may be the best way to describe woes of 150 newly appointed nurses of Hamidia Hospital - the premier healthcare teaching facility of the state.

“All work and no pay” may be the best way to describe woes of 150 newly appointed nurses of Hamidia Hospital - the premier healthcare teaching facility of the state.

As salary of newly appointed nurses are generally drawn from an adhoc budget, which is released after a gap of three to four months, disbursement of salaries have become highly irregular.

Rekha Parmar, the chairman of Nurses Association of Madhya Pradesh, told HT that they have been facing the problem since 2007.

“Whenever we had new batches of nurses joining the Hamidia Hospital, we are always worried about their salaries,” Parmar said, adding that it was shameful that the government did not do anything to resolve the issue in the past nine years.

“A lot of nurses want to work for Hamidia because it is one of the best in the state and also has higher salary structure than private hospitals,” said Gloria Singh, the chairman of Jagruk Nurses Welfare Association.

Singh said the association had to register strong protests every time for release of salary to new nurses. “How will you feel if you don’t get your salary after working day and night?” she asked.

Sunita Jhunjhare, a nurse, said they met officials at the Directorate of Medical Education. “We were told that the department still did not have the budget to pay nurses salary of previous months,” she said.

“September is about to end and the salary of August is yet to be cleared. How do we run our household?” Jhunjhare said.

Abha Nigam, another nurse, said they won’t go on a strike as the patients get really troubled and functioning of the hospital gets disturbed.

“But, we will continue to demonstrate until our salaries get credited. We will wear black band on our sleeves to show our disappointment,” she said.

G.S. Patel, the director of Medical Education of Madhya Pradesh, said the medical college was an autonomous body and authority has included salary of new staff under the adhoc budget.

“We have spoken to officials in the finance department in Hamidia Hospital and asked them to approach the government for release the budget,” Patel said.

Ulka Srivastava, the dean of Gandhi Medical College, said they have discussed the issue with the principal secretary of the health department and requested a yearly budget so that “our nurses don’t have to suffer like this”.